APNU still finalizing elections slate

-Roopnaraine

WPA co-leader Dr Rupert Roopnaraine says APNU hopes to finalize its list of candidates for the upcoming elections, including who will be the representative and deputy representative of the list, by next month.

“We know that there are issues on the table that we have to still resolve; and we anticipate as we have been resolving issues quite smoothly all along, we don’t anticipate there’ll be any difficulty in resolving those issues which are before us,” Roopnaraine said yesterday, when questioned during a press briefing. He was asked about progress being made in naming a leadership team and compiling a list of candidates.

Roopnaraine admitted that it was a challenging process, saying that the players have to decide how the various lists are going to be compiled, who is going to be the representative of the list and the deputy. “These things are on the table. The APNU is working actively on them,” he said, adding that early September is the deadline for these issues to be resolved.

Meanwhile Roopnaraine, while responding to a question, identified the Emancipation Trust and a Linden-based party as two recent additions to the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). APNU consists of the PNCR, WPA, the GAP, the NFA, the Guyana People’s Partnership (GPP), the Guyana National Congress (GNC) and the Guyana Association of Local Authorities (GALA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF). APNU continues to be open to other groups until Nomination Day, Roopnaraine said.

Questioned about the small membership of the organizations joining APNU, Roopnaraine said that APNU would like bigger organizations to join it is not discriminatory against these smaller groups. “We would like to see the large organizations come into the APNU, and there’s no question about it; we would like to see trade unions coming in; we would like to see professional organizations coming in; and there’s no doubt about that and our preference would be for really substantial organizations to come in,” he said. “But frankly we are not in a very discriminatory mood in relation to organizations…,”he added.

Roopnaraine also noted that an encounter organized by civil society and the APNU’s leadership is expected to take place before the end of the month.